Celebrate with Holiday songs from the West Coast!

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Christmas songs are here. My two favorites this season.

Patrick O’Heffernan

My mailbox – both electronic and physical– has been stuffed with Christmas music. Rather than run a list of who is doing what for Christmas, I decided to pick two that really struck me as stand outs. Those two are “Mi Nueva Bici” by Nancy Sanchez and Whitney Tai and Classical Guitarist, Michael Trainor‘s winter EP debuting their original composition “Flowers By The Roadside,” plus an eclectic version of “Silent Night”, due out next week.

“Mi Nueva Bici” evokes memories of your childhood Christmas when you begged Santa to put a bicycle under the tree and there it was. Using a simple, happy tune on the keyboard, Nancy sings in Spanish about those joys, her voice lilting like a Christmas ornament reflecting a grinning statue of St. Nick on the mantelpiece, overlooking your two-wheeled treasure. The chords are simple, but sticky – it is the kind of song you can put on in the background as you decorate your tree or hum to yourself while cutting the dough for Christmas cookies. “Mi Nueva Bici” should be under everyone’s tree.

“Flowers By The Roadside, ”is a different kind of Christmas song, one that reminds you of the deeper feelings of the winter holiday season. Whitney’s voice is magical, filled with emotion, evoking a night walk along a winter sidewalk with moonlight glinting off the snow. Produced by #1 Billboard Composer, Tim Janssens, the EP also brings us an eclectic interpretation of “Silent Night” – a break of the traditional versions we are hearing on radio stations and elevators. The EP has the feeling of a Carpenters album from 1971, but is very much in tune with Christmas today.

It is customary for holidays to evoke traditional music (“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” notwithstanding). Both “Mi Nueva Bici” and “Flowers by the Roadside” in their own way take a different path but they both bring us to the Spirit of Christmas.

Patrick O’Heffernan, PhD., is a music journalist and radio broadcaster based in Los Angeles, California, with a global following. His two weekly radio programs, MusicFridayLive! and MusicaFusionLA are heard nationwide and in the UK. He focuses on two music specialties: emerging bands in all genres, and the growing LA-based ALM genre (American Latino Music) that combines rock and rap, blues and jazz and pop with music from Latin America like cumbia, banda, jarocho and mariachi. He also likes to watch his friend drag race.